
Class... ..L- Q ■- 
Biiok 



;v' ? ? 



SJ 
A 



//A^ 










THE VOICE OF TRUTH. 



THE 



VOICE OF TRUTH; 



THOUGHTS ON THE AFFAIR 



BETWEEN 



THE LEOPARD AND CHESAPEAKE 



A LETTER 



A GF.NTLEMAX AT NEW-YORK 



HIS FRIEND, 

/ 



IROS, TYRIUS VE, MIHX» NUI.LO DISCEIMIKE AOr.TVU. 











. : 7 


.VEW-YORX: 


'':^<'MVash•.nS^°'^■ 


PRINTED FOR J. OSBORX, 




NO. 13 PARK. 





1807. 



s 



i 



THE VOICE OF TRUTH. 



MY DEAR TRIEND, 

THE crisis in our public affairs, for which I have so often 
and so earnestly endeavoured to prepare your mind, has at 
length arrived, accompanied with symptoms of a far more in- 
auspicious nature than any,which, in the most gloomy reveries 
of my despondence, ever struck my imagination. You have, 
no doubt, heard of, and I have had the mortification to wit- 
ness, the despicable farce which, for the gratification of the 
multitude of this city, for the entertainment of all Europe, 
and to the no little discredit of the actors who performed in 
it, was played off upon the people, by the companies of both 
houses of political actors united, in the Park of New- York 
on the 2d of July. For the fourth time, the faded remnant 
of that body once great and proud, and justly proud because 
truly great, the federalists, were found sitting down with 
the Clintonians, (De Witt in the chair) like two hostile na- 
tions of Indians after a scalping match, the sachems of the 
good old tribe of order, and the sachems of the rights of 
man, in savage policy smoking the calumet of peace toge- 
ther, vhile envenomed and unappeasable hatred lay rankling 
in the bottom of their hearts — their unanimiti/ was great, for 
as Puff says in the plaj-, '* whenever they do i/g-rce, ihe'ir uiia7i- 
imity is wonderful." 



Shallow lookers-on were astonished and delighted — the crat- 
ty democrats, had so greatly profited by this new-fangled 
itch for leagning, which had for some time been the habit 
of the federalists, that they considered it to be one of the 
best staple commodities of their traffic, to exhibit their ad- 
versaries in the humble state of players of the second or third 
fiddle in their overtures ; and of course tlicy were plca3ed,while 
the federalists seemed to be rendered insensible by their humil- 
iation, to the loss of their importance and dignity. It might 
liave been as well, if they had first considered the nature of 
«iucli coalitions. A moment's cool reflection, might have told 
them that a sudden union of inveterate enemies, is the sure 
signal of victory to one of them ; — that, like a truce or an 
armistice in military affairs, it is an incontrovertible proof 
of conscious weakness and inferiority in one party — and 
that, if the contests between them, were contests of principle, 
unanimity must be a base subordination of principle, either 
on one side or the other. It is e\idcnt that these disadvan- 
tages were on the side of the federalists, since the meeting, 
and all the proceedings of it, were strictly conformable to the 
creed of the democrats, a creed which the sound federalists 
had for years the honour to oppose. — The whole was a dema- 
jvogical appeal to the passions of the multitude : a wretched 
kind oi fjlebhvonsidium. The turbulent tribunes, the Gracchi 
ofthe state, called a meeting of the people — so far the thing 
resembled the proceedings at Rome of old — but unfortu- 
nately the people v/erc not quite Romans, and our degenerate 
patricians were found contented to have their vtnera- 
rable heads reckoned by the poll with the gieasy red caps 
of the mob. 

As an American, my dear sir. you will lannnt these extra 
vagant procccdinf^ — as a federalist, \ou will be grieved for 
ihi:. lamentable degradation of tluitoncc respectable body. I 
for one, should be mucli more proud if there had been less 



unanimity upon that occasion. Aftei- what has so often pas- 
sed between us, you will not think this feeling of mine at all 
paradoxical. Tlie crisis in our national affairs, which has 
thrown out this eruption upon the surface of the union, and 
which has given rise to these very wise and temperate consultes 
sur la pave to which I allude, have been for a considerable 
time expected by me. You know, that I long since declared 
it to be my opinion that the British would, at last, be driven by 
the principled malice of the present rulers of America, 
into some active demonstration of resentment ; you know, 
that I stated to you my conviction, that nothing but the dig- 
nified generosity, the enlarged spirit, and the unexampled 
magnanimity of the late British ministers, delayed so long 
some vigorous manifestations of that indignation which was 
not only felt by the British government, but was become the 
popular feeling of all England. You also know, that as soon 
as, in an evil hour for this country, the king of England dis- 
missed his late ministers and took into the cabinet those who 
now^ hold the reins, I pronounced, that a blow would soon be 
struck at America. The transaction at the Chesapeake,there- 
fore, did not at all surprise or greatly alarm me. I could not 
help deriving consolation under it, from another and a long 
entertained opinion. For some years, I have been apprehen- 
sive that nothing but the pressure of some temporary calamity 
from without, could bring the American people back to a just 
sense of the ruin, in which the counsels and bad measures 
of their present rulers were gradually involving them ; or con- 
vince them of the necessity of calling into power, that party 
who had uniformly opposed those measures, and strenuous!}- 
endeavoured to prevent their consequences. I consoled my- 
self with the expectation, though there were some things 
against them which can neither be concealed or justified, thai 
the federalists w^ould have kept themselves distinct as a body, 
aloof from that set of men whom they knew to be in every 
public principle, and every public purpo'^e, radically wrong 



8 

and corrupt ; and would have remained pure and defecated 
from any of ihc vices of the new school — from the abomina- 
tions of unmixed democracy. That, at least they would have 
steered clear, w'ith a large offing too, of those political vices 
which they had so long and so passionately deprecated, 
and which they so unmercifully condemned in their adver- 
saries. I thought that they would have been the last among 
men, to mock the gravity of deliberation bj- calling the multi- 
tude into council, or to cast one of the most awful and mo- 
mentous concerns that ever befel this country, into the shade 
of ridicule and contempt, by taking the sense of that multi- 
tude upon it. I flattered myself that, at a crisis when facts 
were pouring in, in evidence of the truth and wisdom of the 
federal doctrines, and in condemnation of the party whose, 
evil counsels had brought the country into the dreadful situ- 
ation in which she is placed ; and when it depended upon thu 
part the)- acted, and how they acted it, whether her glory and 
their own should rise or set for ever, they would have stood 
forth in the manly attitude becoming men of the school of 
"Washington. I could not have imagined, that at the very junc- 
ture at which, more than at any other that has ever occurred, it 
became their duty to put in practice their own reiterated pre- 
cepts, to employ all means in their power to make the na- 
tional passions wait upon the judgment — to allay popular 
furv, to weaken public prejudice, to bring the wild and way- 
ward opinions of the people under the gentle control of dis- 
cretion, and to place the general mind under the dominion 
of sovereign reason, they would on the contrary have slijipcd 
into the dirty worn out shoes of the democrats — condescended 
to play the mischievous demagogue, and, with all the servile- 
arts which men of that trade use to cajole mankind, influence 
an already antjcred p()i)ului;e, by unbridling their passions and 
then a])pealing to tlicni. I little imagined, that at the very 
moment w hni the unprincipled faction which they had been 
fur years manfully combating had, by their o\\ n gross mis- 



conduct, corruption and vicious policy, brought their country 
into the jaws of ruin, and themselves into consequent jeo- 
pardy and danger, the federalists would, instead of maintain- 
ing their station and calling down a nation's vengeance upon 
the heads of the offenders, have all at once turned round, and 
clutched them by the hands — meanly stooped to borrow a lit- 
tle weak reflex popularity by sneaking into the good graces 
of the men whom it was their duty to impeach, and by one 
crouching act given them an amnesty for all their past offen- 
ces, gratuitously washed the lepers clean of all their spotted 
sins, and stooped to be the servitors and sewers, to convey 
over them the waters of this stygian regeneration. 

Do I go too far ? — No, I will compel the reflecting part 
of the world to own I do not. You my, dear friend, who 
have known every emotion of my heart, every thought that 
passed through my mind upon this subject, will bear me wit- 
ness how long, how ardently, how sincerely, I have deplored 
the sad waste, or rather havock which has for some time been 
made of the honours and interests of federalism by the imbe- 
cility, by the wavering temper, by the time-serving craft, by 
the expedient-seeking policy of its stewards. Three times, 
had every federalist of sound understanding and pure sen- 
timent, been shocked and disgusted by the prostration of their 
cause and principles, at the feet of mean delusive shabby expe- 
diency. Three times had they seen the hungry oflice-hunters 
who compose the pack, but who, having neither huntsmannor 
whipper in to keep them in order, are ever running lewd and 
babbling, push their hydra heads into the noose of Jacobinism, 
in hopes like Lovegold to " touch, touch, touch," — and three 
times did they see them exposed to helpless indignity. They 
coalesced with Burr, and to the end of their existence the foul 
B will stand branded on their foreheads for it. The killing 
of Pierce furnished them with the basis of another project, on 
which their hopes fixed with all the irrational avidity of ill in- 

B 



10 

lormcd men blinded by rapacity. To turn the irritation of 
the muhitudc to their ov.n advantage they were weak enough 
to think possible, and lorgetful enougli oi" their foregone prin- 
ciples to attempt. They threw flaming brands among the peo- 
ple — ihev added fuel to their fire — they heated the warm — 
ihey inflamed and set in a blaze the hot, and they exasperated 
outrage into madness. Nay, casting the laws of the land under 
the feet of thcmfuriated populace,andputtingonone side all the 
higher order of sentiments which give man that distinctive pre- 
eminence over man that he seeks in vain from wealth, they 
gave the //a/ of their approbation to the ruffians who felonious- 
ly robbed the British of the things they had fairly bought and 
paid for at market, and which wen- as much their own as the 
coats they had brought on their backs from England with 
them. 

The part of this transaction wiiich is, if not most to be 
lamented, certainly the most surprising, is that with a kind of 
mob-like persuasion almost amounting to personal violence, 
they impressed into company with them a man who, whether 
considered as a gentleman, a scholar, or a man of moral excel- 
lence, ranks amongst the highest in his couutrj-, and as a states- 
man is perhaps not surpassed in any country in the world. He 
was met bv this whirlwind of infatuation, error and outrage, 
and carried away, without his feet being suflfered to touch the 
ground, along w ith it.* 

It was natural to imagine, that having now felt the baleful 
tficcts of their unprosperous cle\erness, they would have re- 
verted to the good old proud mode of wise men and i)ettcr 
days, and insured to themselves the negative merit of doing 
no mischief to their cause bv such ill advised abortive at- 



• I may say, I tli'mk, of iliis (nilv wortiiy c,'cnllcmcn, "Qiil pcnitctpecassc. 
jjcnc cslinnoccns " 



11 

tempts. But nothing could put them out of conceit with ex- 
periment. For election purposes they made a new kague 
with Lewis — with a man who every day of life that passed 
over his head, was controverting their opinions, impeaching 
their principles, and in fact villifying the best men of their 
body, by the most fulsome panegyrics upon Mr. Jeiferson. 
For if those repeated eulogies on Mr. Jefferson were true, 
Hamilton and all the federalists must have been the worst of 
men for traducing him. This coalition had the cifect that 
might be expected — it injured federalism, and it extingviish- 
ed the little influence of Lewis. 

Thus, had they been three times repulsed by the people witlv 
shameful discomfiture. Their enemies chuckled with joy, 
and considered them as having reached the very bottom of 
degradation — but some few honest spirited federalists, though 
mortified, consoled themselves with the hope that being now 
probably disgusted with experiments of that kind they would, 
however hungry they might be for the fishes, be, if not 
ashamed, "at least wearied with throwing out their lines to 
the populace, only to draw them up over and over again, with 
their hooks naked, their clumsy baits nibbled away from them, 
and their sinking lead all over bemired with the filthy mud 
and slush of democracy— in a word that they would for the 
future avoid every ephemeral allurement which fate, intent 
as it should seem upon making them the instruments of their 
own degradation, might throw in their way, to seduce them 
within the circle of derision and contempt. 

These good men however reckoned without their host. 
A new incident occured — one which afforded the federal 
• leaguers an opportunit5^ to trace back their steps into the path 
of dutv from which, in the case of Pierce they had so deplora- 
bly deviated — to maintain the character of their country and 
assert its independence, and to put the public xnind and spirit 



IS 

into the cool and firm posture best calculated to meet a dread- 
ful concussion — to collect into one focus all the scattered rags 
of intellect « liith, in the wreck of human reason that sur- 
rounded them, could be brought together, wholly deterged 
and defecated from all alloy of brutal physical force and pop- 
ular interposition, and under the guidance of sound, manly 
judgment imd discretion, to pour forth the remains of their 
fury, not in idle vaporous menace and unworthy verbal invec- 
ti\c against a few liritish individuals, acting under the com- 
pulsion of their sovereign's orders, but first in resolute, firm, 
orderly and legal impeachment of that faction, to whose evil 
dispositions and corrupt practices the oflences against which 
all their invective was poured forth, were wholly and solely to 
be assigned, and then if necessary in effective war upon the 
enemy. — They had before them, as fair an occasion as could 
have oft'cred, to do real service to their country by fixing the 
blame of an impending war, which promises to be ruinous to 
the countr}-, on those who were in fact the promoters ot it ; 
but they chose rather to take a shorter and smoother road to 
])0]n>larity, and bluster about their country as if they suspected 
that tliey were not considered by the people sufficiently attach- 
ed to it. And now I hazard the assertion that they will find 
they have failed — that they have absolutely converted them- 
selves into buttrices to support the democratic faction, and 
give it permanency in power, and that they will soon hear the 
world exclaim, that in their conduct upon this affair they have 
absolutely improved upon that which they observed in the 
case of Pierce, and that they have as on the three former oc- 
casions failed to touch the object they soiiglit for. They may 
now indeed say with the tumbler at Bartholomew fair " behold 
I have leaped four times through this blackened hoop and 
never once touched it ! !" 

li there be any man hardy enough to deny all this, I desire 
to refer him to the federal prints for the last eight years, in 



IS 

which, if there be any one series of political reasoning more 
solid, more continuous, more consistent, and better concate- 
nated than any other, it is that w hich goes to prove that the 
conduct of the present administration was such as it was im- 
possible for any man not to consider inveteratelygallican, jac- 
obin, and calculated to subjugate this country to France, to 
draw upon it the suspicion and resentment of Great- Britain, 
and to provoke her at last to open hostility. Upon this 
ground I take my stand. The federal prints were right — but 
why do the federalists now, instead of following up that prin- 
ciple, completely lift the blame of the war from Mr. Jeflerson 
and his faction's shoulders, and join him in throwing it on 
Great-Britain ? Upon this rock I build my argument, and 
" the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." 

" Players and prostitutes, Madam," (says Foote in his cele- 
brated letter to the Dutchess of Kingston) " must live by 
pleasing the public : not but that your grace may have heard 
of ladies who by private practice in that way have accumulated 
amazing fortunes." I very much fear, my dear friend, that 
our political scheme in this country, from the heart of the mar- 
row to the surface of the skin,from the crown of the head to the 
nail of the little toe, from the magistrate to the half fed bluster- 
ing editor who issues his daily doles of calumny to purchase his 
daily cheer, is,from the very necessity of our vitiated habits,in 
a state not one whit more flattering to human pride than that 
of these same players and prostitutes of whom Foote speaks. 
Provided the purpose of the prostitute be answered, that is 
to say, provided the peculium comes into the pocket, it gives 
little trouble v/hether the cullies be Avell or ill — whether they 
come off sound or infected. With respect to the bluster and 
fury which has been displayed on the occasion of the British 
infraction, I hold it to be spurious on the part of those who 
promote it. The democratic leaders affect it, in order to 
-pread among the people a more virulent hatred to Britain. 



14 

In this iliey act consistently with themselves, and upon the 
^ame principle or nuhcr detestable feeling which has govern- 
ed lUl their political conduct since the commencement of the 
French Revolution. Their villainy it is, which has occasion- 
ed the breach, and thkir arts arc now used to widen it; — 
Thev are in tliis only clenching the nail which they have for 
several vears been driving. But as for the honour or true 
interests of the country, why truly they feel as much about it 
(not more) as they do for the saviour of the world, whom 
they have denied. They have served France as they ima- 
gine by provoking England, and that is enough for them — 
that is sufficient for jacobins. 

With respect to the federalists, I do them the justice 
to believe that they really do lament the affair, and that if 
they had given themselves time for consideration, they would 
have done, what they ought to have done. Something no 
doubt mav be allowed for the first impulse of national pride 
a little outraged ; but the great moving principle, the main- 
spring of their conduct in this instance is, popularity seeking. 
As Falstaff says about the rebellion of the Percys, popula- 
ritv thev imagined lay in their way, and they thought that 
they might as well pick it up. By these two adverse parties 
the whole pojjulation of the country is set in aflame, without 
its knowing anv thing more, than that an American vessel has 
been fired into, and that men were killed under such and such 
circumstances, and with such colouring as those interested 
persons chuse to assign to it. The public gallimautry of pa- 
triotic resolutions and anathemas against England, potent 
though its effects may be on the many, is more party-selfish 
tiian sincere — a niere springe to catch the poor long beaked 
finipes and woodiocks who live by suction — a trap for the sov- 
erei'.^nof America, the mob, Irish, et hoc genus omne. 

Let us, who have not given up our souls to the specious 
dclusi(m5 of the day, in\e'uigate the matter with the temper 



15 

which its importance demands ; let iis put our notions me- 
thodically together upon it, and though we cannot stop the 
barbarous torrent, or prevent its inundating the coun- 
try ; try whether we cannot, like a certain kind of 
provident ant, raise for ourselves a little mound, a hil- 
lock above the flood, from the top of which we may look 
down, tho' painfully to ourselves, contemplate the scene be- 
low, and provide for our own exemption from any share in the 
blame of the general ruin. Let me have your thoughts, and I 
will endeavour to give you a conception as clear as I can of 
the general subject as it appears to me. 

There is nothing in the detail of tKe late transactions which 
gives me so much pain, of which an American ought to be 
so much ashamed, or which must lower our country in the 
estimation of the world so much, as the illiberal invective, the 
womanish railing,the absurd and impotent expressions of an- 
ger which have been poured fourth from every mouth (from 
every newspaper is no wonder) and from the meetings of the 
populace in their deliberate resolutions upon the captain of the 
Leopard. One would think, that those who uttered them, were 
ignorant of the meaning of words ; or had been all their lives 
bred, either in the innocence of a nursery, or in the guilt of a 
brothel. 

What in the name of heaven could they mean by applying 
the term cowardly to the conduct of the captain of the Leop- 
ard ? An officer receives a positive order from his comman- 
der in chief — " you are to stop such a ship and demand from 
her certain men that are on board her. If they are not given 
up to you, you must force them in the ordinary way, that is, 
fire upon the ship till she complies." According to the old 
and the new doctrine of the whole worlcl,to hesitate to comply 
would have been cowardice in the officer, and as such would 
be punished with disgrace and death. — But we are all infected 



1# 

with the new philosophy, and imagine that we have a right to 
make distinct laws to suit our own convenience upon every 
occasion that occurs. " What a mean, shabby, cowardly 
thing it was to fire upon a vessel that was not able to resist." 
This, my dear sir, I have heard uttered from all sorts of peo- 
ple. Nay, I have heard it wafted forth from lips that Hebe 
might have envied, on a breath sweet as the breeze of dawn 
as it blows over banks of violets. I have seen a face on which 
the eye of taste might dwell with endles transport,and on which 
God had stamped the charming serenity of his own heavens, 
distorted by a transient knitting of the brows, as the vulgar 
babble of the day, put into that mouth by beings of an inferior 
order, passed through it ; and I could not help cursing the sub- 
ject which could even for a moment fret a channel in the fore- 
head of so much loveliness. 

To heighten the dramatic effect upon the public mind, 
ladies were said to be on board the Chesapeake. This 
is indeed managing the affair in the true Jeffersonian spi- 
rit — appealing to the pity and forbearance of our enemy. 
The Chesapeake was a vessel of war or she was nothing — 
as such, not as a passenger ship, she was to be treated by 
the captain of the Leopard. If the reasoning used upon 
this occasion were true, the whole business of wars would 
be inverted, and weakness not strength would be the 
sure road to victory. Instead of fitting out a seventy-four 
with five hundred men and a sufficiency of guns,lhe best policy 
would be to fit out a neat barge — say a gunboat or so — if she 
had any guns to house them, or if need were, spike them — but 
take tare and invite a large party of ladies on eveiy cruise, 
so that whenever a vessel of war ranged along side, the ladies 
might be handed in full fardingale upon deck, where if the com- 
n>anderof the lujslile vessel should have -dwy bray cry a la ycf- 
fcrsoTiy he would be afraid to fire upon them,but valiantly retire 
as Sir John Mordaunt once did, or is said to have done, from 



17 

the coast of France at the sight of the cockle womim* on 
the strand. 

But let us suppose captain Humphreys had acted so unlike 
a British oIHcm-, and so certainly a la mode cle Jefferson^ as to 
leave his duty undone; let us suppose him in arrest,and brought 
to a court martial for disobedience of orders, and then let us 
see how well his answers to the questions of the court would 
become him. 

C. You received these orders from the Admiral — did 
you in obedience to them demand the men from the comman- 
der of the Chesapeake ? 

H I did. 

C. — Did he comply? 

H No, he peremptorily refused. 

C. — Were not the Admiral's orders to you to compel the 
delivery of them by force in case of refusal ? 

H. — They were. 

C. — And can you account to the court for not doing so ? 

H. — Why, there was no way of compelling him but by fir- 
ing upon the vessel in the usual way. f 

C. — And why did you not fire ? 

H. — Because the Chesapeake was weaker than the Leop- 
ard, and it would be taking advantage of them. 

C. — So then, sir, you imagine that a weaker vessel, however 
mischievous, must never be coerced by a stronger. But you 



* Sir John Mordaunt being sent on an expedition against Rochefort, on 
the coast of France, returned without attempting to land a man. A brave 
soldier, angered at the disappointment, on his return home, gravely related, 
that Sir John, on viewing the sliore with his spy glass, and seeing some old 
women gathering cockles, turned round in trepiation, and said, we cant at- 
tempt to land — the Swiss troops ai-e drawn up on the shore. I know them 
by their broad faces and long whiskers. 

c 



18 

had your orders, und had no discretion — you were bound to 
obey them. 

II. — I know thiU ; but then there were ladies on board. 

C. — I am atVaid, sir, this apology wont avail — you must be 
shot, sir. 

I believe that, from the beginning of time up to the present 
moment, there has never been known a single instance, till 
America presented it, of a military or a naval officer being per- 
sonally abused by an enemy for executing the orders of his 
commander. Those who propound this foolish and disgusting- 
trash know that they are all the time speaking against com- 
mon sense, truth, and the established customs and laws of the 
world. But sec, my friend, what all this would end in. It is 
of the right jacobin family, and would lead to the re-estab- 
lishment of the old barbarous warfare — or rather to the war- 
fare of the savage tribes of our aboriginal Americans, in 
which every man who was caught was put to the torture, 
scalped, and murdered. I very much fear, that if Captain 
Humphreys had entered Norfolk, after the 23d June, a tra- 
gedy would have been acted which would have vied with any 
that had ever been performed there, in the days of the re- 
nowned Pocahuntas. For the credit of the country, then, let 
that disgraceful gabble be got rid of as soon as possible.— 
Captsun Humphreys, like every other subordinate military or 
na\al officer in the world, is a machine which must move ac- 
cording to tlie laws prescribed to it. If he were taken he 
must be treated as every other prisoner of war is, unless our 
goodly goveiTjnjent should think proper to abrogate the long 
established hiws of war, and adopt the murderous, discretion- 
ar)', capricious codl of its prototypes — the French revo- 
lutionists and IJonapartc. I am indeed grieved for all this 
weak wandering of our people fiom the path of propriety. 
I am sorry thai they ha\e degenerated into mouth warriors 
a!id 

" Scolded like a drab— like a very cullion." 



19 

I am sorry too, that they descended to the petty spitefulnefts 
cf staving the water casks. Blows and battles of another kind 
should have been the first, given to Britons, by the offspring of 
Britons. Don Quixotte was asleep when he cut the wine 
skins, and he had the merit of imagining them to be giants. But 
tlie giants with all their crested honors were at sea,on board the 
British fleet,when the water casks were so valiantly encounter- 
ed, andmade to bite the ground^ and when their poor,thin,harm- 
less blood was shed upon the shore, by men as broad awake 
as I am. 

So much for the conduct of the British officers. But matter 
of much deeper, and more serious import, remains now to be 
discussed. And here let me remark, that upon the just con- 
sideration of the part of the subject that is to follow, it will de- 
pend, whether America will come out of the contest with ruin 
and disgrace, or with honour and advantage. In a country 
where the popular will so entirely influences government, and 
the opinion of the people is the guide of those who should 
guide them, he alone can do effectual service to the country, 
who will set them right — who will tell them the truth, however 
disagreeable — who will serve them against their will — who, 
when he finds them diseased, will not spare the salutary seve- 
rities of medicine — who will probe to the quick to find out the 
bottom of their sores, and, like a resolute surgeon, will boldly 
apply the cautery or the knife if they be necessary. Those 
who, to keep in, the good graces of the multitude, pursue an 
opposite plan,flatter their preposterous notions,nourish in them 
their errors, and (to carry on my former allusion,) rather than 
give a momentary shock to their morbid feelings, by handling 
their disease as they should do, and instead ol radically curing 

'■'■ But skin and film the ulcerous place ; 

*' Whiles rank corruption ruining uU within, 

" Infects unseen," 



are their very worst enemies. At this timc^ more han any 
other, it is exjKclient that the people should be told the truth. 
There is now, ;in intensted conjunction of the two political bo- 
dies of the country to deceive them. He who has the courage 
to set them right, has a just claim for ever on their gratitude 
— and, if that claim be disallowed, he will at least have his con- 
science to resert to for his reward. 

The first thing which a m^an so disposed would advise the 
people to, probably, would be, to take care that their reason be 
not smothered in their stlf-snffdency and anger — he would 
advise them to scan the affair, between the Leopard and Ches- 
apeake, as if it were a contest between two indifferent persons, 
submitted to their arbitration; in a word, as if they hadnothing 
to do w ith it ; or rather, indeed, he would advise them to look 
with a jealous and suspicious eye on their own overruling pre- 
judices, and to throw a weight of candour into the opposite 
scale to counter balance those prejudices, to take especial care 
that their rooted aversion to Britain, and their overweening 
fondness of their own country, do not hurry them into decisions, 
which will not be the le{>s niischicvous to themselves and their 
country because they resulted from errors and predilections of 
their own adoption : and he would peremptorily tell them, 
that it would not only lead to their material injury, but redound 
to their eternal dishonour, to urge forward a contest, and 
make an inseparable breach with England, without investiga- 
ting the subject— sifting it to the bottom, and conscientiously 
convincing ih>.'mselves upon the questions,whetherBritain may 
not have received provocation sulhcient to justify her conduct, 
and whether her own existence would not be endangered by 
abstinence trom it. 

The worst of it is, that, of our population, there is too large 
a jjortion who either do not understand the nature and 
grounds of the contest in which Enghmd has so long been 



21 

engaged with France, or who are actively and on principle 
hostile to England, merely on account of the part she takes 
in that very contest. I have sifted the minds of the people 
of America diligently, laboriously and attentively, and 1 am 
firmly persuaded that our general dislike to Great- Britain, tor 
some years past, has,been inculcated by those who are agents of 
France, or else who are partial to her, not as France, but as the 
mother and nurse of jacobinism. — I know that, when touched 
to the quick upon this subject, there are some of them who will 
recur to the injuries of the revolutionary war ; while others, 
again, will attempt to justify the undue, leaning to France by 
pleading the gratitude due to her by America for her services 
in the revolution. But neither of these really consider, or, 
considering, believe what they say. The animosities of the 
revolution had greatly subsided, and where they live at all 
now,are only kept alive in the memory of vain-glorious would- 
be orators, as cabbages are kept in winter locked up in dark 
cellars, fermenting and stinking, to fill up an occasional vacu- 
um in a periodical oration, which they want brains to fill, to 
fuiTiish topics of coarse invective against Bi'itain, and fulsome 
adulation of themselves per antithesin — and to supply them 
with a subject upon which to disgorge the froth and foam and 
spume of their turgid declamatory folly, and to luxuriate in 
that idol of their tasteless souls, fulsome, nonsensical bombast. 
As to their gratitude to France, it is still more false and pre- 
posterous. That France, to whom America is indebted (if 
indeed she be indebted to any,) is not the France to which 
those persons are now affianced — that power which assisted 
them (but not till the affair of Saratoga had secured to Amer- 
ica her independence) was the monarchy, not the jacobin usur- 
pators, or any of them. Had Bonaparte been on the throne, in- 
stead of Louis,he would have helped America to shake off Eng- 
land, just in the same way that he helped Venice to get rid of 

THE IRON YOKE OF THE PROUU HOUSE OF AusTRIA (for 

those were the words of his promise to their ear) — that 4s 



2i 

« 

TO snj', after robbing her of every thinp;, he would have handed 
America over to Eiif^lanc), as he did hand over Venice back 
again, by the treaty of Campofoumio, to the iron yoke of the 
proud house of Austria. 

ITiis fond predilection of America for France, then, cannot 
lairly be kept (uit of sight, in contemplating the motives of 
(ireat-Britain. — I hazard nothing in asserting, that from the 
first unfolding of the French revolution, down to this day, a 
vast majority of the inhabitants of America, among whom 
were one and all of those who adminibter our government,and 
that i)arty and the partiz.<uis of that party, have uniformly and 
openly exhibited, and without ever affecting concealment,avow- 
ed an hatred and hostility to Great-Britain, wholly unprovok- 
ed on her pan, and unwarranted bj' honor, honesty, common 
sense or national policy. In a contest between two nations, 
neutral to us, and being at three thousand miles distance, what 
business — what right had America to make herself a parti- 
san to either, and shew her malice ? — America, the pacific^ 
tfit' mild — was it not enough for her, that she was feathering 
lier nest by the contest, and enriching herself from the ship- 
wrecked commerce of the belligerents. If national profit and 
advantage then were the only objects of the people they might 
.-nid ought to have been contented. But far from it — they 
held other opinions — they thought that they might kill two 
birds with one stone, and while they lined their pockets, and 
puflfi.-Q up their luxury and ujxstart state, till vanity itself might 
cry shame, and voluptuousness, breathless with indignation, 
would cry hold, no more! they might gratify their _^0(j(///<Y//-rA' 
with a little modicum of jacobinism. Yes, my friend,a damn- 
aljle doctrine — not a nation has been all along the object of their 
affections ; and when we speak of the contest between France 
and Britain, and of all tliosc who in all countries, whether 
parties, states or individuals, side with either of them, we 
can truly speak only of jacobins and anti-jacobins — all who 



2a 

are friendly to France being jacobins — all who are friendly 
to England being anti-jacobins. Away then with all the rest, 
it is idle, foolish gabble, and untrue as idle, and still more 
wicked, as well as untrue, than foolish. Smitten by th€ 
charms of the French revolution, fraught with congenial re- 
gards for the revolutionists, and stimulated by the contagious 
intercourse of rebels and jacobins, fugitives from Europe, 
that faction which has for eight years ruled,and by ruling curs- 
ed America, early became jacobin ; and as England was the 
guardian genius,who threw her shield and her spear over Eu- 
rope and the world to guard them against the jacobins, she 
naturally became obnoxious to the hatred of diat body, Avhere- 
soever they did congregate. In America, they congregated 
thickly, or rather swarmed and clustered like bees. This 
mass of bad, combustible matter, was daily increased by hosts 
of jacobin Irish, who fled from justice at home, to take refuge 
in the asylum proclaimed by Mr. Jefferson to be open /or op- 
■pressed humanitij — (a bitter ingredient in the present lament- 
able state of things, and therefore hereafter to be further no- 
ticed) — and who did not add so much to the quantity, as they 
improved the virulent quality of the mass. Stung with a 
sense of traditionary wrongs, to which the good natured jaco- 
bins had kindly opened their eyes, and with the disappoint- 
ment of their schemes, as w.ell as by expulsion from their na- 
tive country — by nature also, furious, untractable, implacable 
and fell, they one and all applied themselves with their ut- 
most industry to the jacobin work, not of serving themselves, 
not of serving of America, not of doing credit to their coun- 
try, and reducing its blasted fame, but of stirring up the 
hearts of Americans, to hatred, and vengeance, and hostility 
against Britain. 

Thus we find the greater part of the Americans, including 
jheir executive, his council, and a large majority in congress, 
deadly enenvies, on principle (such as theirs,) to England. 



24 

In very part of America the most fulsome affection was 
shewn to the French, the most pointed insuh to Britain. 
Though British individuals could not but be fretted imd an- 
gered at the misadvised conduct ot this mohbery, it not only 
was, not resented, but probably never was seriously thought 
of, bv the British government. The public affronts and inju- 
ries, which, at the instance of a French faction, combined with 
tliat ver}- set of men now in power in America, were offered 
to the British nation, the cowardly mobbish attacks upon 
Britons, in America, though the two countries were at peace, 
and in seeming amitv — the personal violences offered to British 
men and Britisli vessels, in Charleston harbour, and elsewhere, 
bv hordes of French revolutionaiy assassins — these, the na- 
tional magnanimity of Britain did not stoop to notice. Nay, 
when th<^ verv magistracy of America became participators in 
the guilt, when the chief magistrate of Charleston, so far forgot 
the dignity of his country, the probity of the magistrate, and 
the honour of the gentleman, indeed, the ordinary decencies 
of life, as to take part with the ruffians, and liberate them, 
gratis, from prison, to which they had very justly been com- 
mitted, not a word of complaint or expostulation was heard 
from Great-Britain. 

Here, let us suppose a case. Suppose a British cruising 
vessel of war were to enter a port in America, and that her 
captain and crew, finding the people there, violently partial to 
his country ,should, in conjunction with other Britons on shore, 
and with many Americans, board the French \ essels in die 
pf)rt, rob ihem and throw their effects overboard, i)eat the 
crews unmercifully, and cut and maim them — suppose that, in 
order to prevent the total destruction and murder of the French, 
a magistrate w ere to order a jKirty of troops to arrest and put 
the English ruffians in jail for the riot and assault — and sup- 
pose that the governor should, out of ze;d for England, and 
hatred to France, have liberated the English ruffians, and k • 



25 

them loose again to cut the throats of the French. Suppose, 
that in addition to this, the captain of the English vessel, at- 
tended b)'- his myrmidons, and accompanied hy a large portion 
of the city, were to take the French flag from a vessel, and 
laying it down in the streets, trample upon it, and the English 
captain, Vv-ere before them all, to untruss, and void his excre- 
ments upon it, while the crowd shouted praises congenial to 
the deed : what would the French rulers — what would Bona- 
parte have done when he heard it ? Whv, indubitablv, (if En- 
gland did not bar him with her navy) he would have laid the 
town in ashes. Yet all this was done, by the French and 
Americans,to the English and British flag in Charleston — and 
the vile author of it, attended by -ome respectable charac- 
ters in that city, dined together, and thence went to the thea- 
tre, by his invitation, to the benefit of a favorite actress, m here 
the fellow, after sitting in doughty state, went upon the stage, 
playing a thousand apish tricks, with the bonnet rouge upon 
his head, to the great admiration, delight and applause of the 
elegant audience. 

I own, that the endurance of these things, was much fitter 
for Mr. Jefferson's Cabinet,than for the government of Great 
Britain. And I cannot help despising it, because it sounds 
so much in unison with that v^ery note of the Virginian 
Nightingale, which I consider to be the pitch pipe of all that 
is contemptible in hum.an conduct. Yet let it be remembered, 
that England was at the time hard pressed by jacobins at 
home,as well as in France and America. The loose slanders, 
and casual calumnies of a few individuals, are little, and there- 
fore ought not to be noticed, much less should they be rested 
upon as grounds of animosity against the nation to which the 
persons who utter them belong. But when an unabating, uni- 
form, unappeasable, inexorable antipathy is manifested to a 
particular nation, by the heads and ruling part}-, and through 
them, by the majority of a commonwealth, m hose magistrac\- 

n 



26 

and legislature is at short periods appointed by the people — 
and whose executive shewed him to be still more, if more 
could be, than the majority, filled with hatred and prejudice 
against that nation — ihe nation so hated is pinned down, by 
the very necessity of her situation, to a state of hostile suspi- 
cion, and however mild and magnanimous, however mode- 
rate or tolerant she may be, there must be gradually deposited 
in her bosom, an accumulation of combustible matter, ready 
for a violent and terrible explosion, whenever the first heavy 
collision takes place between them. That this has been for 
vears the posture of the public mind of America towards 
Britain is undeniable. The federalists know it — they have 
all along disapproved it, because it served party purposes i 
yet when the natural consequences exhibit themselves, in the 
affair of the Chesapeake, they turn on their heels, and affect 
to be aS violent against Britain as if they thought that Britain 
had no pro^ ocation. 

Have the federalists forgotten, or will the democrats pre- 
tend to den\', that the party who now rule this land, who give 
the tone to ever\- political act and opinion, and whose partia- 
lities and prejudices set the wheels of government in motion, 
in whatever direction they please, did attempt to raise an 
army in this country for France, when in her very worst, ja- 
cf)bini/.ed, revolutionary state ? — Will they deny, that they 
did every thing to urge the administration (then fortunately 
federal) into a war with England, and an alliance offensive and 
defensive with France ? — Will they deny,that tliey have done 
cvciy thing to Cripple the efforts of (ireat Britain, and to ad- 
\ ance the interest of France? — ^That their prints were almost 
«hollv employed in reviling Britain, and in i)leading the 
cause of France, — or that their very shippers, and captains, 
and commanders of every kind, from an Indiaman down to a 
dung barge, were active, energetic agents for France, in their 
way, putting in practice all the tricks, and telling all the false 



27 

hoods* in which they are so infamously versed, and for \vhicl» 
they are so notorious, that when any thing mean, fraudulent, 
deceptive, or perfidious is attempted to be described in the 
ports of Europe, or in the East or West Indies, a Yankee 
captain is generally selected as the object of comparison ? — 
Will they, I say, pretend to deny this ? — Perhaps they may, 
for what will they stick at ? 

There is not a man in England, that reads the public prints 
for political information, that has not long known the fanatical 
abhorrence, which the gendeman who has for eight years ruled 
America, entertains to England. His conduct in France, his 
letters, his correspondence with Mazzei, his close union with 
the jacobins and French party in America, his subsequent con- 
duct when secretary of state, all marked it sufficiently. — His 
principles too are a pledge for his enmity to that country. The 
friend of Tom Paine could not be the friend of England. — The 
advocate of French revolutionary principles could not but be 
hostile to the virtuous cause of Britain. In private, his zeal 
has overborn his good manners, and, what is more extraor- 
dinary, his hypocrisy. A very pedant, he could not discourse 
out of his habitual calling. In mixed companies — nay,on public 
occasions, when the malice of the man should have been veil- 
ed under the decency of the chief magistrate^he could not de- 
cline his favourite topic. But sneers, invectives, and infa- 
mous slanders, trickled from his beggarly lips upon Britain. 
English gentlemen have been obliged to remind him politely, 
that they were of the country he reproached. 

Why, my dear sir, for one hundrcth part of the insults 
and injuries, offered by this ruling faction, and its chief, or 



* They very frequently set the British fleets wrong', particularly Lord 
Nelson's, when pursuing' the French from the West-Indies ; he was iu. 
^le ri^ht t;rack, and one of these jacoljiii villains set him wrong. 



28 

rather this sect and its high priest, to Britain, Turreau 
would, if thcv had bi tn ofit red to France, have looked him 
into annihilation, and Bonaparte -vvould have covered the 
plains o^ Florida and Louisiana with gallic cutthroats. No 
concessi()n,ho\vever mean, no sacrifice, however great, no sub- 
mission, however shameful, no humiliation, however dishon- 
ourable, v. as held too great to keep them in temper. 

Upon getting into power the president lost no time in shew- 
ing his teeth to England. He began with shedding crocodile 
tears over the sufferings of Europe from war. A\'icked war, 
^'agcd against France and jacobinism,by Britain. Thence he 
cast towards Iixland the eyes of his fond paternal care, and 
beckoned to the rebels there, under the quaint general term 
of OPPRESSED HUMANITY, to comc over and take shelter under 
his generous^ brave and powerful wing. Why,sir,that very act 
ought to have been resented and repelled, in iimine^ by Great- 
Britain. — A more indecent, unjust, and insolent inirusion, a 
more malicious aflront, or a deeper injury, could not be offer- 
ed by the government of one nation to that of another. Let 
us appeal to the bosom of any man upon the subjtct! suppose 
u person hearing that a disagreement subsisted between the 
lather of a family and a part of his children, and that the father 
had been rcprcseuted as harsh and unjust upon some occasion, 
and they as discontented and moody, should intimate to the 
latter, that as they were very ill treated he had a room and beds 
at their scr^ ice,and would receive them, if ihey would abandon 
their parents; what must the father, what must any man of 
feeling, common sense, or candour, think of him r — Thiit the 
person making the offer was a saucy, officious intruder, affront- 
ful and injurious I — No, but that he was a bad man, and an 
enemy, and had some dishonest, base and sinister design in it 
— and how much stronger would the motives be lor thinking 
so, if that same person had publicly laid it down as his princi- 
ple, that no one should take strangers unadvisedly into their 



29 

house. Mr. Jefferson, when he held out temptations to op- 
pressed humanity (meaning thereby the rebels and seditious 
subjects of Great-Britain) to come to America, for shelter, and 
used his unlimited influence with congress to give those same 
malcontents new privileges, as an inducement, had, at this very 
time, his opinion recorded in that gallimaufry work, " Notes 
on Virginia," that it was unwise and impolitic to do so. Some 
strange motive, no doubt, then it must be, which urged him 
to this act. Americans think it was to multiply the red-cap*d 
snouts who vote for him — but I believe that was an after con- 
sideration ; I believe it was to injure Great- Britain and soak, 
away its population. I am sure that Britain thinks so. I dare 
say Bonaparte has been told so. 

Let us only contemplate this man, stretching out his encou- 
raging, fostering hand, to rebellion in Great-Britain, and then 
let us vie whim leagued with Wilkinson, in carrying persecu- 
tion to the utmost severity, to a rigour beyond the lav/, in the 
case of Burr. — His majesty, Tom,bv the grace of — (of whom) 
the U. S. of America, against Aaron Burr, late vice king of 
the said United States — make out the mittimus for this Vice 
King! Gracious God — what American, if he have the soul 
of a chicken in his body, or the brain of a grandfather gan- 
der In his pate, can bear this absurd and wicked trash. 

"• Quis tulerit Gracchos seditione querentes ? 

An asylum for merit persecuted, and humanityoppressed, by 
the British government, being thus opened in its very teeth — 
or as I have heard some Englishmen keenly remark, a recep- 
tacle for stolen goods and run away servants and children — 
being thus publicly announced, not only those who had never 
even pretended to be so, and who only wished to evade the 
duty they owed to their countrj', poured into America from 
Great-Britain, from America, and Ireland. Mutineers and 



30 

deserters tVom the mvy nnd army were received, and the peo- 
ple of America were ])UdgGd by their ill designing rulers to 
protect them. Systematic perjury was called in, to aid and 
cover the deserters ; and men who had but lately arrived, were 
swora to have been born in this country. The laws establish- 
ed for ccntm-ies, by which Creat-Britain, and I believe all na- 
tions in the civilized M-orld, regulated their population, were, 
for the first time, called in ([uestion and contravened — and by 
whom ? "\Vhy,by America — by atwig sprung from a stray root 
of Britain, long after that law had been established. Never 
till, in their own chimerical vanity, and for their o^\ti sinister 
purposes, the democrats of present America did it, were there 
any men bold enough to controvert the old principle, that " no 
citizen or sul>ject has a right to shake off his allegiance to his 
country." Without entering into metaphysical discussions, it 
is enough on this occasion to say, that it was and is the law of 
Great-Britain touching her own subjects, and that, touching 
them, no nation has any right to impugn that law ; at least any 
right but force. It remains to be seen whether America will 
find the value of the object, incumbered witV the injustice of 
the attempt, worth an experiment to obtain it at the expence 
offeree. The fact is, that every man detained from Britain, 
in violation of that law, is taken from her by a species of fraud 
and may legally be retaken by force, since there is no com- 
petent jurisdiction to which Britain can appeal for justice. 

I ml;./at iierc enlarge on the nature of the contest in which 
Great-Britain is engaged. A contest for the whole civilized 
world ; to preserve all that is valuable to them upon 
earth, and in which England ought, for that reason, to liave 
the hands and hearts of all the world along with her. The 
federalists once thought so — it was one of their most preg- 
nant topics of controversy with th:; democrats. But where 
would be the use of my sjjcakingnow of a principle, discarded 
even from the common place book of its advocates, and now 



Xiiore strenuously than ever opposed by its enemies. What 
would it avail to assert true principles, v/hen the whole coun- 
try, frightened from its propriety by the broadside of the 
Leopard, throw down their principles,as if the weight of them 
retarded their proceeding, and in the rash precipitation of al- 
arm, imagine a thousand dangers that exist not, and running 
their heads pell-mell against each other, create real dangers 
and mischief, by their inconsiderate efforts to provide against 
those which yet can scarcely be said to have a shape. 



-Sic qviisque pavendo 



Dat vires famse, nulloque auctore malorum 
Qus finxere timcnt. 

To return. — I put it to the bosom of any man of candour, 
whether Great-Britain has not had, upon what I have already 
stated, sufficient grounds of jealousy of America, and wheth- 
er, if nothing more v/ere chargeable against the latter than the 
pertinacious, systemstic trickery, by which she endeavours to 
drain the very life blood of the British navy, and to palsy its 
arm, there is not abundant ground for the direct charge of the 
present chancellor of the exchequer (Mr. Percival) that " the> 
American government was acting in connivance with Napo- 
leon, to injure Britain." For I would ask the president and 
his faction whv he should enter — I beg his pardon, I don't 
suspect him of it — but lead his country into the bloody 
ARENA, armed cap a pee, as champions for the mutineers and 
deserters from the navy and army, or population of Britain. 
For them, he or his country can have no affection — and to my 
certain knov/ledge, out of a thousand of those reprobate demo- 
crats, who would clamour aloud to give those men generous 
protection, and who would involve their country in all the hor- 
rors of war for it, there is not one M'ho would pay down ten 
dollars to save a poor culprit of them from the gallows. Can 
Great-Britain, can any man, having a heart in his body, be in- 



32 

sensible to, or forgetful of, the conduct of this faction, whicli 
now holds the set- ptre of America, in the case of the muti- 
neers and niurdcrers of the Hermione. With what atrocious 
pertinacity they resisted the delivering of them up to justice 
in England. Why was that ? — was it that mutiny and mur- 
der were so dear to them, that thev were recommendations of 
the perpetrators to their favour? — or was it, that the male- 
factors mutinied against, and murdered Englishmen? — 
Hah ! — there's the rub. "What ! my friend — is not that cir- 
cumstance an ingredient, and a strong one too, in the mass of 
proof which the world has before it, of a hostile disposition 
in the rulers of this country, to Great Britain? — What says 
every Briton ? — Why this he says, had Mr. Jefferson been 
president, the atrocious murderers, who were justly hanged, 
and the fragments of whose skeletons now dangle in gibbets 
on the banks of the Thames, would be to-day clever, honest, 
living citizens of America, voting for Mr. Jefferson and his 
partisans, standing hail fellow M-ell met, in perfect equuUtij 
with the best of them, and joining their savage voices with 
the other savage voices of the mob, for vengeance on that 
tfctllou's hind, Great Britain. 

Sievit animis ignobile vulgus ; 



JanKjac faces, et saxa volant ; furor arma ministrat. 

Hitherto we sec nothing but one elaborate tissue of hostile 
design and malicious conduct, on the part of the present 
American administration, to Great Britain. Enough, if it 
were reduced into the form of a manifesto, to rouse the in- 
dignation of the people of that country, calm and phlegmatic 
.Lsthey are, and to justify in the eyes of the world, any mea- 
sures of resentment that might be adopted by that govern- 
ment. 

But the deadliest blow aimed at Great Britain, and that 
which had l)"en nearly the most fatal to her, was struck by 



this country. It was one in which the insatiable rapacity oF 
our merchants was most deeply concerned. And it furnishes 
a curious, and a striking illustration, of the pernicious elfects 
of commercial avarice on the human heart. 

In all former wars between Great Britain and France, the 
superior means and power of the latter would inevitably have 
ultimately insured'hcr success, if the navy of the former had 
not enabled her to cut off the sinews of war, by intercept- 
ing on its way, the colonial produce of France and Spain. 
Successfully accomplishing" this object, always brought, and 
indeed was the only means of bringing, the pride ot those 
countries down to reasonable terms of peace. In the present 
war, it was, for some time, matter of astonishment to the 
world, how the several rulers of France were able to recruit 
their-finances. Mr. Pitt, more than once, announced them as 
in the very gulph of bankruptcy. — The accession of Bona- 
parte to the imperial diadem, added to the enormous expen- 
ces of the war^ the extravagance of a court, which, in prodi- 
gality, far outdid any thing known in the worst days of the 
Bourbons. It was known, that the revenues of France, and 
all that the tyrant was able to pillage from the various conquer- 
ed countries, or exact by loan from the other countries ot 
Europe, or to draw by fraud and intimidation from this, did 
little more than supply the unexampled extravagance and pa- 
rade of his court. How then was his vast military and na- 
tional expenditure furnished ? — Scarcely a French or Spanish 
vessel could get in safety from their colonies to the mother 
countries ; yet the enormous waste of his treasury was con- 
tinually repaired. How was this ? — Why, the \vhole colonial 
produce, of France and Spain (bullion and all) — were con- 
veyed home under the neutral flag of America, and thus were 
the merchants of this country, for their own private emolu- 
ment, administering aid to the power of France, and wasting 
Great Britain to the bone. Yet it was in this ver)- class of 

E 



34 

men, Britain and hei* cause had the greatest number of pre- 
tended friends, and Bonaparte and France the greatest num- 
ber of seeming enemies. There Avas hardly one of ihem who 
would not accompany a British politician through the uholc 
round of his principles, arguments, opinions and assertions, 
and cordially ring the changes upon them all, till he came to 
the point of the covering trade. Then every thing wore a 
new aspect — then the M'hole artillery' of the counting house 
were turned upon G. Britain — then every trace of the ruin 
of the world by Napoleon, of the danger of jacobinism, of the 
prostration of the liberty and independence of the nations of 
the world beneath the feet of France, of public spirit, order, 
patriotism, good government — religion — even of Christianity 
itself, which seemed so deeply impressed on my gentleman's 
mind before , were instantly erased, from the retina of his 
brain, over which there immediately danced money bags, and 
bank shares — town houses and country houses, coaches and 
gigs, and cotillons and jigs, and madam and my daughters, 
with a whole cavalcade of bandboxes from Mrs. Toole's and 
IVIrs. Bouchard's — Duport's bills for capering, and Jackson's 
for the piano forte, with silk hangings, and Turkey carpets, 
and God knows what of pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the 
musical glasses, and then comes his honest and sagacious ob- 
servation — " why, 'tis true, sir, as you say, I wish England 
could get the better of Bonaparte, but with regard to that there 
trade (die covering) we have aright" — A right, sir — you had 
no right to it before the war. France and Spain shut you out 
from those colonics. Av,but France and Spam have since op- 
ened them to us, and gi\en us a right. — Inckeil ! that was very 
kind of them, to be sure — to give you a right which was with- 
lield from tluinselves, and which, if Britain has a right, or the 
power tu wiililiokl, from them, the principals, she has, a fortiori, 
a right to withhold from you, their second hand assignees. 

Tiie fact is, that these two questions of right, viz. that of 
Britain to impress her subjects, and that of her preventing the 



35 

covering trade, were so intimately interwoven with the war- 
means of that nation, that she could not dispense with them. 
They were, therefore, either to be admitted, or the matter 
must of necessity resolve itself into a business of force. It 
was the interest of both sides to avoid that ; but to give 
those points up entirely would be certain ruin toGreat- Britain. 
The late cabinet of St. James's seems to have taken the matter 
up in the happy temper that belongs to great minds — in the 
true spirit of peace. They made concessions to America — 
which lost them their popularity, but which will for ever em- 
balm their memories, to gratitude and love, when the misera- 
ble names of the miserable reptiles who have occasioned the 
strife shall be buried with the clod that composes them. The 
treaty of Messrs. Moni'oe and Pinckney was a glorious one tor 
Amertca — but it was not palatable to Bonaparte, because it fix- 
ed peace between Britain and America upon a stable footing. 
The President of course did not relish it, so like the old mule 
of the Abbess of Andovillet, in Tristram Shandy, " By my 
fig," says he, " I'll not stir an inch further." It is worth while 
to enter into the heart of this great man, and see how " his 
MAJESTY, or rather his magnanimity," communed with 
himself upon it. 

In all this underhand, base business, which I have with re- 
ligious punctuality detailed, the British government preserv- 
ed the most dignified calmness and temper — and while that 
great people,with unruffled serenity,each went on with his own 
■work, undisturbed in the midst of war by the tumult that sur- 
rounded them, was this, in peace, harrowed up with the mise- 
rable process of its own internal baby -house conflicts. Of the 
mischievous temper and disposition of our government liabies, 
no doubt the British had full knowledge — of the imbecility, 
folly, corruption and timidity of its rulers, the}- could not be 
ignorant — ^'xu they minded it not. The two parties remind- 
ed mc of Burke's beautiful figure—^' Because half a' dozen 



JO 

grashoppers under a Ln\ make the field ring with their Im- 
portunate cliink, while thousands of great cattle, reposed 
beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are 
silent, pray do not imagine that thou who make the noise 
are the only inhabitants of the field ; that of course they are 
many in number ; or that, after all, they are other than the 
• little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and trouble- 
some insects of the hour." 

England made no complaints, played off no cozening tricks, 
oflered no cheating bargains — she acted neither the beggar 
nor the bully — she besought no loan, dragooned us out of no 
tribute, she exacted nothing from our fears, she took no ad- 
\antage of our folly. Upon every disagreement, and at the 
instance of France, our administration was fractious enough 
with her ; she acted in the spirit of candour and friendship. 
Though she knew, as well as Napoleon does, what stuff our 
chici is made of, she sent no hideous raw head and bloody 
hones, in whiskers, to awe us into compliance, or " distil us to 
jell\- with th'j act of lear" — but to demonstrate the sincere 
>k'ish fur harmony which influenced their minds, her ministers 
'oelccted, as tiieir messenger, a gentleman calculated in every 
respect to win the regards, and to extinguish the prejudices, 
of all who were not wholly French. The son of the lord 
chancellor of Britain, of temper mild, in manners gentleman- 
ly and conciliating — frank, yet firm, unassuming and unosten- 
tatious, thougli liberally maintaining the splendour of his rank, 
and tlunigh suflieiently dignified, wholly unsullied with official 
arrogance, and untainted with that hauteur Avhich, in a great 
measure, shut those who preceded him out from the hearts of 
the people, and of course from an intimate knowledge of the 
country. The appointment of such a person ought to have 
been received by the American administration, as mostprob- 
•blv it w .T^ intended, arj a compliment, and as a proof, not a 



37 

little satisfactory, that they wished to cultivate the friendship 
of America in sincerity. 

All those manifestations of temper, on the part of Great- 
Britain, were so directly the reverse of the conduct of France, 
that it is likely the American cabinet (taking its auspices from 
its own general feelings) imagined that England was afraid to 
go to anygreat lengths — and indeed the language of the presi- 
dent's creatures in congress, on the non-importation law, en- 
courage that belief. He, in all likelihood, thought, that because 
Britain did not bully, she might be brow beat, and that because 
she wished for peace, she was afraid to go to war. He refus- 
ed the treaty, though so advantageous to America — he perem- 
torily insisted upon sheltering British desert^s with his flag 
— but as he was no way interested, and disliked the commer- 
cial body, he left the covering trade to take its chance here- 
after^ 

Mean time an unexpected change takes place in the British 
cabinet. And now he ought to have known what was to be 
expected. He knew that the pi-esent ministers denounced, 
in parliament, their late ministers, for their concessions to 
America. He ought therefore to have given orders accord- 
ingly, and either to have conveyed to his officers a little of the 
abatement of spirit which he himself must have felt on the 
occasion, or else made active preparations for war — we see 
no such thing in the conduct of the officers of the Chesapeake 
. — we percicve no trace of it in his. 

Certain men, who allege they are citizens of the United 
States, being on board the British fleet, deserted. Here par- 
ticular care must be taken to retain in sight one leading fact, 
.which is, that they got away by an act of mutiny. Intelli- 
gence is given to the British officer that they have entered 



$s 

on hoard llie Chesapeake. The British captain meets the 
American commander on shore and demands his men — the 
American says he knows nothing- of them ; but that at all 
events, no power should take from him any man sailing under 
his flag. Intimation is given to commodore Barron, that, if 
he attempts to carry the men out with him, thev will be taken 
fiom liim, notwithstanding which he goes out — the Leopard is 
ordered by the British admiral to go out before the Chesapeake, 
to demand the men, and if they be not gi\-en up, to take them 
by force. The captain of the Leopard obeys his orders — 
commodore Barron refuses the men, a broadside is poured in, 
and after much mischief is done, the men ai'c taken by the 
British. 

Now it appears to me, that, considering the men were mu- 
tineers, commodore Barron acted unwisely, if not illegally, in 
detaining them. The question respecting the men is no 
longer, whether they were or were not British subjects, but 
whether they v.-erc or were not mutineers. Mutiny is a crime 
of so high an order, that it signifies nothing who commits it, 
whether alien or citizen. An alien may escape from a ship, 
but an alien has no right to set fire to it, or create a mutiny in 
it/to effect his escape. The navy of England has many for- 
eigner??, Danes, Swedes, Russians, Portuguese, 8cc. in it — the 
American ships are swarmed Avith British seamen. Is it 
then lawful, or ought it to go abroad that it is, that none of 
those are pvmishable for mutiny because they are aliens ? I 
hope no I)ody will maintain such absurd, such dangerous doc- 
trine. Here lies the point of distinction. Commodore Bar- 
ron little knows the duty of a seaman, or the laws of war, if 
he would suffer a British \essel to detain from him a British 
:.ubject who had mutinied on i)oard his vessel, and I hazard a 
conjecture, that no British captain would be guilty of shelter- 
ing such an oflTendcr. 



39 

At all events, there was no occasion to keep the mutineevfi 
on board the Chesapeake, in defiance of all laws. If commo- 
dore Barron wished to afford them an escape, he ought to 
have put them ashore, and not gone to sea, in defiance, with 
them. If he meant to show his resolution, he ought to have. 
been prepared to back it better than he did. 

The whole of this unfortunate affair, therefore, for v/hlch 
so much unmanly abuse has been launched at the British, is 
evidently of American origin, and springs remotely, as well 
as proximately, from ourselves. Whatever hostile feelings 
England may entertain in her bosom against America, are but 
the natural consequence of the repeated injuries and insults 
of the party in power. Whatever evils may follow the bu- 
siness of the Chesapeake is justly attributable to the illegality 
and imprudence of harbouring and protecting the mutineers. 

No doubt it v/as natural enough for the democrats to grasp 
at this business, to throw the nation into a flame — the party in 
power have, in this transaction, and in the concessions of the 
federalists upon it, obtained all that they have for years been 
seeking for — they have made a diversion in favour of France 
— they have put it in their own power to play more openly 
into the hand of Napoleon — they have kindled new animos- 
ities, and more lasting ones, between this country and Britain^ 
the only scourge of jacobinism, and so far forth as they can 
cripple or diminish the efforts of England, they aid and sup- 
port that damnable principle. They have brought over the fed- 
eralists, or rather the federalists have brought tliemsehcs, to 
a virtual acknowledgment, that, not the faction in power, but 
the British, are wholly chargeable with tliis transaction — and 
of course, have passed an act of indemnity for the whole mal- 
administration of Mr. Jefferson. What the democrats, there- 
fore, have done, is natural enough ; and it is observable that 
they have, through the whole business, acted and spoken with 



40 

much more temper than tlic federalists. Wouhl to God that 
the conduct of our party was as blameless as that of their ad- 
versaries. 

Turning, on the otherhand,to the proceedings and expres- 
sions of the federalists, we see nothing to praise, and much 
to condemn. ^Vhcn I consider how much they might have 
done for their countr)-, and for the sacred cause, which totters 
on the shoulders of such miserable supporters, and contrast 
it with the mischief they have done, and then compare both 
with the conduct of the democrats, I am fain to think, that 
the omnipotent has decreed to make this coiintrv a monument 
of his wrath, by wholly consigning it to the destiny it has for 
several years been seeking ; that for this purpose he weakens 
or dementates the good, and gives daily increasing vigour 
and energy to the wicked — that he consigns to distraction, and 
withers into imbecility, the counsels of those to whom it was 
given to support the cause of virtue among us, while he per- 
mitted the vicious to carry on their v»'ork with spirit, and with 
all the infernal energies which the devil can impart to his elect. 
This calls to my mind a passag-c in a celebrated speech — in- 
deed one of the very best ever delivered in the British parlia- 
ment. The orator is contrasting the energetic conduct of the 
French revolutionists, with the comparative imbecility of the, 
measures of the British cabinet, as I do now the vigour of 
the democrats v/ith the feebleness of the federalists, ahd what 
he says is so completely applicable to this subject that I will 
quote it. 

" When I look at the conduct of the French Revolutionary 
'' rulers, a . compared with that of their opponents ; when I 
'■'■ see the grandeur of their designs ; the wisdom of their 
" plans ; the steadiness of their execution ; their boldness in 
'*■ acting; their constancy in enduring; their contempt of all 
"' small obstacles and temporary embarrassments ; their in- 



41 

'*' flexible determination to perform such and such things i 
'' and die power which they have displayed, in acting up to 
" that determination ; when I contrast these with the nar- 
" row views, the paltry interests, the occasional expedients, 
" the desultoiy and wavering conduct, the want of all right 
*' feeling and just conception, that characterize so generally 
" the governments and nations opposed to them, I confess I 
" sink down in despondency, and am fain to admit, that if 
*' they shall have conquered the world, it will be by qualities 
♦' by which they deserve to conquer it. Never were there 
*' persons, who could shew a fairer title to the inheritance 
*' which they claim. The gi-eat division of mankind made 
" by a celebrated philosopher of old, into those who were 
" formed to govern, and those who were born only to obe}-, 
" was never more strongly exemplified than by the French 
" nation, and those who have sunk, or are sinking, under 
'^ their yoke." 

Let us take a retrospect of the principles laid down for so 
many years by the federalists — ^let us contemplate the points 
of their attack upon the democratic party — let us examine in 
detail each part of the antifederal counsels which they con- 
demned — let us then see how they have acted upon the pres- 
ent occasion, and we shall be able to judge of their policy.— 
But my heart sickens at it, and sunk beneath the two fold pres- 
sure of disgust and despair, my soul takes refuge in the imag- 
ination, from the horrible, loathsome objects, presented by the 
senses. My fancy pictures to me the modey crowd at the 
Park, interrupted in their proceedings by a number of voices, 
calling out to make way for a person who approaches, and my 
ears catch the name of Hamilton, first distantly murmered, 
and then uttered in loud shouts of transport by the multitude 
— he is returned — their hero — their patriot-statesman. Their 
father and their guide, was not dead — he was but absent — he 
•is restored to them, — The crowd opens, retiring on either 

F 



42 

aide, like the waves before the prow of a stately vessel, and 
like the eddy in its wake, as he passes on, they close and 
roll after him behind, stretching forth their hands towards 
him, as if to reach the hem of his garment. He advanceb — he 
stands within the circle — first glancing with scorn over the 
enemies of his countrv^ and then casting a momentary look 
of keen reproach upon those he once called friends — he turns 
to the people, all around him, while a flame of passionate af- 
fection, mixed with tender pity, flashes from his eyes; he w aves 
his hand ; — all are hushed, more mute the tenants of the char- 
nell'd grave are not. Then, in that voice and attitude so well 
known, so often dwelt upon with rapture, he speaks to them — 

" Dear friends — dear fellow-citizens — Awful and alarm- 
ing in itself, and afflicting to me, as is the occasion upon 
which you meet here this day, it scarcely grieves me less to 
find you called together to consult upon it, and it grieves me 
infinitely more to find you convened under such auspices. 
Convened on the one hand by a set of men, who never yet 
called you together but for the purpose of deceiving you, 
who never yet associated with you but to aim a blow at our 
glorious federal constitution, and to eradicate from your 
bosoms all the reverence for the principles upon which it 
was founded by your Washington, and his great, wise, and 
glorious co-patriots — and on the other hand, by a set of men 
who, trusted with the guardianship of those principles, and 
that constitution, have, for some purposes, for some new pros- 
pects, whicli have, since I last saw them, opened to their view, 
deserted their trust, abandoned their country, the consti- 
tution and its jninciples, who have given you up, and indeed 
themselves bound hand and foot into the hands of these demo- 
crats, and now league with them in summoning you here, to 
inflame, to blind, and to set \-ou all wrong — to jirecipitate you 
into a fatal error, and to kindle up a fire, dazzled by the 



4S 

blaze of which, you may run headlong into the flames, and 
be consumed. 

« These last to whom I have alluded, I once called my 
party-friends, and individually, some of them were the friends 
of my bosom, dear to my affections, high in my opinion, and 
deeply rooted in my heart. I thought them wise — I 
thought them virtuous — I did believe, that that which con- 
science dictated to them as right to be done, they had the 
courage to do, and that whatever they once dared to attempt, 
knowing it to be right, they would persevere in executing 
with fortitude. — But behold, a few months only have elap- 
sed, and what have they done ? Why, after three unsuccess- 
ful attempts to graft themselves, by approach, upon the wild, 
thorny, crabbed stock of the bad party which they so long 
opposed, I find them, on my return, budded into that poison 
tree, that manchineel of our land, jacobinism ; and all at once, 
without the slightest check from remorse or shame, entering 
into the delusive schemes of that set of men, whom now I have 
in my eye, to arm your passions, and array them against your 
reason ; to confound your judgment by exciting your worst 
prejudices, for the purpose, no doubt, when they have you in 
that temper, of turning your resentment, for the outrage on the 
Chesapeake, away from its true, legitimate, and proximate 
object, their party, and of fixing it upon a false and a remote 
one, Britain. 

" Had that set of men, in conjunction with whom, with 
perseverance though without success, we long fought the 
good fight, not forgotten, or wilfully deserted their duty, they 
would, instead of joining in the call of this day upon you, 
taught you the true distinction between those occasions upon 
which the people may with propriety meet, and those upon 
which they ought not to be called together to deliver thtir 
opinions. They would have apprized you that matters 
touching internal regulation, where the> may be supposed 



44 

competent to judge, or impowered to act, there the people ■ 
may vith propriety be called together. — Such I hold to be 
peculiarly proper in all matters touching election, because the 
people ha\ing the right of suffrage in themselves, it is fitting 
that thev should confer together upon the best mode of ex- 
ercising it. But, in all cases in which foreign nations are: 
concerned, nothing can be more absurd, and few things can 
be more wicked or mischievous, than consulting with or tak- 
ing counsel from the people. In domestic concerns, it is pos- 
sible for the people to form a con-ect opinion ; and if attempts 
are made to set them wrong, they have, scattered among them 
here and there, materials to enable them to detect the impo- 
sition, if they should not be, as they too often are, parties in 
it against themselves. But of foreign relations, none but 
persons highly enlightened by education, experience and stu- 
dy, deeply versed in general political science, and trained to 
state affairs, can possibly be competent to judge. To call the 
people together, in council, upon foreign affairs, therefore, is 
only to treat our fellow citizens like children — to put razors 
into their hands, with which, if they open and have any thing 
to do v.ith them, they will be sure to cut themselves. If this 
be true, respecting matters of foreign relation in general, how 
much more imperiously true is it, in a question such as that 
upon which these two parties have this day convened you — 
a question, not merely involving foreign concerns, but involv- 
ing us in wiir with a foreign countr}'. 

" Let me tell you, my dear friends and fellow-citizens, that 
instead of being surprised and alarmed at this shock, I, for 
my piu't, am astonished it did not happen long ago. I have 
been for years astonished, and so have these federalists, at 
the forbearance of Great Britain. I have been astonished, 
and so have they, at the morbid firmness of that man's mind 
and resolution (on every other occasion feeble, timid, and ir- 
resolute) which could, as your executive has done, persevere 



45 

in a system (not very carefully concealed) of covert hostility 
to the interests of Great Britain, for no purpose that I can see, 
but to support the abominable armed doctrine which that great 
country has been endeavouring to destroy. I have been asto- 
nished, and so once were my late friends, that he who could 
endure the insults of France, who could gratify the tyrant of 
that country by procuring impolitic legislative acts of this, 
who could cultivate that despot's good graces by sneaking 
adulation — purchase exemption from his hostility by tribute, 
and submit his country to that despot's buffeting, and to the 
bufFetings of Spain, should all along present such a spitefiJ 
front to Britain. I would ask all ^vho stand around me, was 
the occlusion from New-Orleans, a smaller wrong than the 
stopping and boarding our vessels at sea — was the outrage- 
ous incursion into our territories on the Missisippi — were the 
seizure and carrying off, as prisoners, our fellow -citizens, by 
the Spanish troops, under the orders of the Spanish govern- 
ment, a less insult or a lighter injury than the conduct of capt. 
Whitby? Was the deliberate, cruel murder, at Charleston 
bar, committed by Ross and his banditti, under French co- 
lours, on the crew of a British vessel trading with us, and 
under the shield of our amity — ^^vas the system followed for 
years, by the Spanish government, of corrupting the people 
of our western states, in order to separate them from the 
union, and bring them under the dominion of Spain — a sys- 
tem of conspiracy in which the favourite placemen of our pre- 
sent administration have been proved to have had a share — 
were all these things taken together, I say, less a cause of war, 
on our part, than the affair of the Chesapeake ? Certainly not. 
Then why this rout, this tumult, this noise, this frothy non- 
sense about the latter, while the former have been, not 
passed by, sub silaitio^ but worse — noticed with a demand 
for satisfaction, and refused? Why, because the faction, who 
will and who do all these things, are too resolute to bend — 
because they lack a little of that time-serving, expedient- 



46 

seeking policv, of T\hich their adversuries have so much to 
spare — because the democrats, inflexible and indefatigable, 
are not to be won over to yield one atom, or even for a mo- 
ment to put on die appearance of disapprobation of any thing, 
however manifestly atrocious, which they have once done or 
said, or to flinch from the cause which they have once es- 
poused, because they have not at heart the probity or gene- 
rositv, nor, not feeling it, do they ever stoop to the mawkish 
affectation of candour, not even to the hypocrisy of owning 
themselves once wrong in an unimportant matter, in order to 
be excused for a greater default, and because, as it was once 
their will to favour France from aff"ection to jacobinism, they 
would not allow that country to be wrong in any thing, how- 
ever imperiously it might act to America. And now, it suits 
their purposes to blow up the flame, not only because, as jaco- 
bins, they abhor Britain, but because they, and their party and 
chief, having been the cause of this outrage, they know it is 
their best policv, to divert your eyes and your resentment, 
from the proper object — that is to say, from their party and 
jts chief, to Britain, who, in whatever hostile acts the navy 
do, will have acted only under their compulsion. Thus, they 
will accomplish a two-fold purpose — they will shelter them- 
selves, and provoke, as they have for years been endeavour- 
ing to provoke, this country to hatred and actual war with 
Great Britain." 

Then pausing for a moment, and turning to the federalists — 

" And you — you — Oh shame upon you I — i't/;/ join them 
in this clamour. — You who once poured forth from all your 
pens rivulets of gall against these democratic demagogues, 
for the vile game they were playing upon the people, in in- 
flaming them against Britain, that country which you have 
ten tliousand times asserted, and justly asserted, to be the 
saviour of the civilized world, from French bondage and 
jacobinism I'cu can now play the demagogue — ijcu can 



4.7 

now play into the hands of Fiance — Ton can now calmly 
and deliberately, and with more good will than you would 
throw a cast off, worn out coat to a pauper, throw off from 
you, as if it were a burthen, all recollection of the gratitude 
due to Britain for her sixteen years tough contest for the 
protection of mankind, against the worst despotism that the 
human race has ever bent beneath. Has jacobinism, or has 
French tyranny changed its nature, or have you yours .'' — 
Alas — I fear neither. Jacobinism and Napoleon are just 
the same as when you inveighed against them, and so are 
you. Circumstances alone are altered. When men give 
themselves up to the sway of circumstance, and not of prin- 
ciples, their opinions may oscillate as often as the pendulum 
of a clock — their conduct fluctuate with every flux and re- 
flux of the sea, and yet they themselves remain the same. — 
When any bad passion gets dominion over the heart of a 
man, the sense of all things worthy is extinguished. Of all 
the passions, avarice is the greatest monopolizer of the heart 
of man. — It thinks that it has nothing, if it has not the whole 
man, body, soul, intellect and all. In that unfathomable 
abyss, all is ingulfed — I ought to have known it before — 
but now I know, and I assert, that no two things ought to be 
kept more remote, as no two things can be in their natures 
more opposite, than the trader's desk, and the bureau of the 
statesman. Never should the port-feuille of the latter, 
touch the counter of the former. They can healthfully exist 
only in different regions — they must breathe in opposite at- 
mospheres. Not more unfit for the pure and virtuous joys 
of the youthful nuptial bed, arc age and ugliness, decrepi- 
tude, disease, the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, than com- 
merce for affairs of state, or avarice to play the ardent patri- 
ot's part. The systematic, regulated selfishness, engendered 
by those banes of the soul, are incompatible with that noble 
self-devotion which fills the patriot's bosom, and keeps him at 
any, and at ever>' moment of his existence, in readiness to 



48^ 

bring, if need be, with his own hands, the fue to the altar, and 
lay himself down a willing sacrifice at the shrine of his coun- 
try's good — Avarice has come upon you. When you talk of 
your countrv,vou mean so much trade as you can make in your 
country. — When you talk of your country's welfare and inte- 
rests, vou mean your profits. — When you talk of her freedom 
and independence among nations, you mean her right to 
thrust the little knavish bowsprits of her sea-craft, great and 
small, into every creek and cranny in the world, to fetch and 
carry your pedlarv.— And when you cant about the justice 
and necessity of wars, you are only soothing your good 
hearts, with the delightful anticipation of the greater quan- 
tity of traffic its havock and its injuries to others, will of ne- 
cessity, send to your doois. — The .war of ninety-three be- 
tween Great- Britain and France, was soon discovered by you 
to be a veiy just and necessary war, because it put so much 
of the carrying trade into your hands, and opened to your 
ra\ished eyes the golden portals of the French and Spanish 
colonial trade. On the same principle of selfishness, the 
peace of Mr. Addington was a detestable, unjust and unne- 
cessary peace, because it shut those portals again ; and it was 
so vilely sudden and unexpected too, that the merchants had 
not time to shuffle and hedge off, as much as they could of 
their engagements. All this time, however, Great-Britain 
was your favourite topic of discourse, and the theme of your 
rapturous applause, for repressing Bonaparte. — Except when, 
now and then,it was interrupted by some side glance grins, and 
jealous niisgivings, about the British complaints of the cover- 
ing trade. Gi\e you only the liberty to carry home to Eu- 
rope the produce of the French and Spanish colonies, there- 
in- enabling Napoleon to crush Europe, and defeat tlie gene- 
rous designs of Britain, you had ;Uways at hand your good 
word, and your players ready to throw into the opposite 
scale, in favour of Britain — ^nd an al)undant supply of male- 
dictions for Bonaparte. — Oh the villain — curse the monster! 



49 

What would become of the world if Bonaparte were to con- 
quer Britain ? — No doubt it would be consigned to universal 
slavery. And as for this country, it would assuredly share 
the common fate! These Were your words! — butlo! an 
incident occurs which threatens your traffic, your covering 
trade, your profits, and which seems to pass sentence o£ 
blank leaves upon your ledgers— all is instantly changed, and 
what are you woi'ds now — why surely these : — " What is the 
*' world to me i" — W^hat care I whethef Bonaparte enslaves 
" mankind, America included, or not ? — What is it all to us 
" compared with our dear commerce ? — Oh my money, my 
" money, my money, — cry these Lovegolds in real life. — 
" What is country, what is independence, or what freedom, 
" if my profits be interrupted r — And as for Britain, I would 
*' rather see her sunk in the sea, than that I should lose the 
" covering trade. — Nay, for matter of that, I wish Bonaparte 
" and his army were, at this moment, landed in England." — ■ 
And are these the principles of men presuming to call them- 
selves Federalists — of men, daring to press with their unhal- 
lowed feet, on the sacred ground, once trodden by Washing- 
ton, and to call it theirs. Federalists ! — what brings you 
here to-day? — I will tell you. By inefficiency, by matchless 
sloth, by want of energy, and above all, by unexampled sor- 
didness, you suffered the cause which you assumed to espouse, 
to slip from its station — grasping at other things, like the dog 
snapping at the shadow of the meat he carried in his mouth 
across a river, you let go your hold of federalism. To all 
practical purposes, you had suffered federalism to die, while 
in your hands, and left barbarous democracy to ride rough- 
shod over it. Your three expedients to keep it in action, did 
but sink it the lower — and then, instead of taking counsel 
from discretion, you seem to have taken it from despair, and 
to have consigned yourselves to the steep downhill descent to 
ruin before you, rolling on to the very brink of a precipice, 
which you ought to have seen must destroy you. You fool- 

G 



50 

ishly thought to pvocurc democratic success by adopting de- 
mocratic practices, therein acting pretty much in the same 
spirit of sagacity as tlie old midwife, who thought to reco- 
ver her customers, who had deserted to a new-come sur- 
geon, bv calling herself a man mid-uife. And you came 
here to nourish in the people an error, which you once cal- 
led gross, by flattery, which it was your trade to decry by 
means w hich vou once maintained to be abominable ; that is, 
by inflammatory nonsense and toll}-, you strive to enfury 
them — and you would fain compliment them into a good 
opinion of you, by telling them th^tthejare remedying evils, 
vhich they are, by that very flattery of yours, encouraged to 
increase. 

Has it never occurred to }ou, that while the public mind 
is in the state of error and factious thraldom, under which it 
has laboured for a longtime, your business was, not to strug- 
gle for power, but to preserve pure and undefiled the sanctity 
of a cause — to keep a principle alive, not to attempt to put it 
in action, till it could be set in motion with reasonable hopes 
of success? You well knew, that that principle was not to be 
considered, much less treated, as an instrument by which 
men were to make their way to power, or, as the vulgar say- 
ing is, to the loaves and fishes — (such an instrument is demo- 
cracy) — but that, on the contrary, those In whose hands it 
was deposited, ought to have considered themselves merely 
as the instruments of its conservation, or else to have decli- 
ned the care of it. But, in your case, the proper order has 
been inverted. Like the vestal virgins of Home, your busi- 
ness was to keep the sacred fire perpetually alive. But, alas, 
not one bit of vestal or of virgin flesh had you about you ; and 
while your lewd passions, and polluted imaginations, went 
roaming abroad for gratification, the fire has gone out. The 
crime is yours — would to heaven that yours only was to be 
tile punishment. 



51 

** Whenever a great change is observed in the political state 
of a nation, it mav be considered as a postulate, that it takes 
its rise, in a great measure, from a change in the manners and 
principles of the people. The extraordinary' change which 
has occurred in the political situation of this country, since the 
death of Washington, may be observed to have lollowed, 
with strict correspondence, a direful reverse in the morals, 
manners, and principles of the people — a reverse which 
sprung and took its blood from the French revolution, from 
the examples furnished by France, and from the French 
fashions brought into this country. As long as those prin- 
ciples, morals and inmincrs, remain the same, nothing favour- 
able to the cause of righteousness and federalism can reason- 
ably be hoped from political experiment, with all its ingenu- 
ity and chicane. Sublata causa, tollitere effcctus — the mo- 
rals, manners, and principles of the people, are, in a great 
measure, made bv those who lead them. — The democratic 
leaders know all this, and they take care, not only by their 
precepts, but by their example, to pour in the poison to the 
very soui'ce of life. — They have, by degrees, stolen upon the 
public mind, and mastered it, and have built their dominion 
ftver this countiy upon the degeneracy and corruption which 
thev have introduced. You never see them flinch — you 
never see them abate one atom of their original industrv,— - 
never for a moment slacken in the prosecution of their de- 
signs. They very judiciously consider, that it is not enough 
to keep the ship above water, and they continue to pump, in 
order to be assured of its perfect safety into port. Your 
business was to encounter those men by a spirit like their 
own, operating to a very different end, and to destroy their 
bad principles, b}- keeping in vigorous and healthy opposition, 
the glorious principles, moral and political, as well as the 
con-espondent manners, on v. hich federalism was founded. — 
And have you done all this : — No — on the contrary, you 
have made common cause with the persons who have intro- 



52 

tluccd and supported those bad principles, and in doing so 
you have deserted your own. 

"This muhitudc which surrounds you, take their principles, 
their morals,and tht-ir manners, (I mean in things public) whol- 
ly from the two political parties who lead them. Every man 
in this circle and in the union, looks either to the democrats or 
to you, or to both of vou on this occasion. How much then 
must your principles have lost in public opinion and reverence 
by your subornation of them upon this occasion. With what 
face can you ever, hereafter, presume to censure the inflam- 
matory brawling of demagogues, when here you stand joining 
in them upon the' pavement. By your ill fated conduct you 
have robbed federalism of its glories, and by this base compro- 
mise, you have deprived good fcderidists of their best topics 
for its defence. I would ask you what one of the various heads 
of misconduct — what one of the many classes of malefaction 
under which you have impeached the faction in power, it is, 
that vou have not shut yourself out from, by these compromi- 
ses. Upon the charges against them for a dangerous and impol- 
itic leaning to France, you have, by your saddling Britain with 
this business, given them a complete general amnesty — and 
along with it, all the minor parts which composed it, such as 
the raising an army for France, the repairs of the Ber- 
ceau frigate, and many other articles I will not take up your 
time with stating, have fallen to the ground. One of your most 
important o!)ieris of charge, against the democratic adminis- 
tration, was the repeal of the internal taxes, and the substitu- 
tion of jinrt duties upon imported goods. This you knew, 
and frequently charged againr.t the ruling faction, to be one of 
those measures of deception, by which they got into power, 
and by which ihiy acquired that undeserved influence in the 
country, and that dangerous ascendancy over the people 
against which the federal party has all along opposed its force. 
The nccissity of resorting again to internal tuxes, was one of 



53 

the points upon which you most rigorously pressed the faction, 
prognosticating that if any emergency should drive them to 
that necessity, the impolicy of their conduct must appear to 
the nation so glaring, that they would never be able to satisfy 
the people upon it. Your conduct this day, conjointly with that 
of the faction, has an aspect directly to war with Britain. The 
consequence of such a war would be the demolition of the whole 
revenue, as it is now raised, and a direct recurrence to inter- 
nal taxes, the odium and unpopularity of which taxes, wholly 
excited bv their wicked representations, would serve to place 
them in the public opinion in their true light. Here there 
would be a fair opportunity for you to come forward and ex- 
hibit them in full character : But how can you do so after what 
has passed this day. Can you have the face to come forward, 
and while conscious of having done yoiu-'Utmost to inflame and 
urge them on, and to throw the whole blame of the war from 
off them, upon Britain, can you oppose or censure, nay will 
you not be bound to join them, in re-enactingthe internal taxes, 
while if you shoidd but utter a word in opposition, they may 
in answer say , " were it not for the war, the usual revenue 
would have continued, and would have sufficed for all the pur- 
poses of the state, and internal taxes would not have been ne- 
cessary — but you federalists, have been warm in urging on the 
war, and have therefore occasioned the necessity for those tax- 
es which you have now the assurance to oppose. 

" I will not dwell upon the variety of topics, which you have 
thrown out of your hands, and which would have served in 
this crisis to shew the people of this country the incapacity 
of the men now in office, and the corruptness of the means 
by which they have got into it. 

*' But this iz the least evil of all. You have dishonoured 
federalism, and sullied its purity, by the coalitions you have 
formed, since possessed with such principles as the demo- 



64 

Giats avow ami apt upon, to mingle witli, or make one com- 
mon cause with them, is contamination to a federalist — you 
]iave lowered tiie reputation of your cause, you have lowered 
yourselves. — After this last junction, it is to be presumed, 
that you will not venture again forward as candidates for 
public favour. — The democrats conclude so, the country 
expects it. Alas ! where now is the dignity of the party, — 
or is it fled with its spirit ? — Where is the gi-andeur, the 
;;lorv of federalism now r — Where are its splendid hopes, 
•Ls towering pride, derived from conscious worth, and from 
a sense of the highest services of independence, laws, and 
good order, conferred upon this country — Where are all 
these gone, or are they gone for ever ? — Gone — alas, gone — 
hut heaven forbid, for ever. Their ashes laid up in a majestic 
urn, repose far to die south, where sustained by every conso- 
lation, which boundless goodness of heart and greatness of 
n/md can lend to dignity, they are mourned over by the brave 
\ eteran, the patriot father of his country. Oh, if it were given 
bv heaven to the people to know their interest — to seek their 
own felicity and freedom, aiul the permanent security and 
independence of their country, in die counsels and superin- 
tending guardianship of the truly wise and truly virtuous, 
ihen should the genius of federalism rise from its ashes, and 
by her inspiration, the people of this country, one and all, 
be seen embalming the names of their federal heroes 
with tears of repentance for the past, consecrating them to 
everlasting fame, with their gratitude and love: — eml)hzon- 
iag the escutcheon of the house of Pinckney, with new hon- 
ours, and adding a Phoenix, in the heraldry of the country, to 
its arms." 

My dear friend, when I deeply feel what I am thinking of, 
my heart takes my understanding captive, anxl 'eads my judg- 
ment away with it, wherever it pleases ; in this condition of 
mind and feeling, I fell insensibly into tliis prosopopKia, and 



55 

have carried it, I find, farther than strict critical judgment can 
approve. But I care not — I write to a friend — I have indul- 
ged my heart, and provided I make my sentiments understood, 
it is of little consequence whether I do so writing directly 
from myself, or speaking by a fiction of the fancy through the 
mouth of that great man whose loss, for ever to be deplored, 
ought at this moment to be more severely felt by the country 
than at any past, or than probably it can be at ahy future peri- 
od. Because his counsel and his spirit are more necessary at 
this crisis, than they ever were, or, it is to be hoped, ever wlU 
be. 

What I have here said, is but a very small portion of what I 
have to say. If business of a very urgent kind does not pre- 
vent it, you shall soon hear again from wie, on other parts of 
this important subject. 



